And We're Live! Buddys 75g Setup

Meet Big Bird!

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hes been in the tank 3 days now and is loving it. I rearranged a few rocks to give him a little more swim room. Not sure if i like it better or not but i think hed appreciate it some.

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Big Bird has 3 white spechs on him now that were not visible when i bought him. Im sure its ich so that brings me to my next question. Whats best way to cure this?
 
Read this: https://www.livingreefs.com/oh-no-have-ich-do-do-t30950.html

And he is either stress because its a very new tank you have, or he is stressed from the move to the new tank. The real downside to any tang is that they are total ich magnets. However, i think he has a good prognosis if you get him eating, and eating well. But be sure you dont add any more fish until at least after his ich clears up. You dont want to keep adding on stressors, because that will make him more susceptible to the ich.
 
Your Tang looks terribly skinny. I know you've only had him for a few days, what are you trying to feed him?

I use the algae sheets with garlic, the green sheets. They also come in red sheets, my tangs do not like the red sheets, I've also heard of Tangs ONLY eating the red sheets as opposed to the green sheets.

So if you're not having any luck getting him to eat one color, possibly try the other.

Tangs are grazers, in the wild they eat all day long, although the majority of what they're picking at on the rocks has very little nutritional value to them, but that's their habit, you need to try to get him to eat some algae, that's going to be his best chance for survival.
 
ive fed him spirulina brine shrimp cubes for the past 3 days. I melt one in a small glass of tank water and use a small baster to control how much i feed him. Im splitting a cube up, half a cube for each day and only feeding once. do i need to increase his food? he likes the food im assuming since hes eating it. I had a lot of this left over from my cichlids and it says its for tangs and angels in saltwater. I will look for the algae sheets next time i go to the LFS.

Im thinking the ich is from the new tanks stress, the pet store received him the day before i bought him so techincally hes probably been in 3 different tanks/water parameters within the past week. Ive started dosing him and i dont plan on adding another fish for a good 3 weeks due to my budget (just got back from a bachelor trip, damn casinos!)
 
WHAT ARE YOU DOSING!!!!!!!!!!! I sure hope its not copper other wise you can kiss your tank goodbye pretty much. Sorry to freak out, but this is usually when things go from bad to worse. Also anything that says its reef safe wont actually kill the ich. Please read the article i posted to you for some correct information on ich.

Also, brine has almost no nutritional value, its like feeding them candy. Plus an herbivore should be eating mostly greens, so i would get some seaweed in there ASAP for him to eat, and let him eat as much of it as he will take. Then i would rotate between some other frozen food. Ironically, petsmart and petco are great places to get frozen food.
 
Its copper free herbtana by microbelift. heres a link to it. Let me know if i need to stop dosing ASAP.

Microbe-Lift.com :: Herbtana (Reef)

a marine aquarium maintenance company here locally recommended it, they use it with their clients on tanks that are too big to catch infected fish.

on another note, what are signs of a hungry tang? PRC, you mentioned tangs being grazers... does this mean he will naturally pic at things in aquarium for food or does this mean hes hungry... cause hes nibbling on different rocks, sand, and the glass
 
Yeah, grazing means he will constantly pick at the rocks, if he's doing that it's a good sing that he's wanting to eat. They do this all day....they're very similar to horses and cows ...grazing all day.

The bumps that you can see on his stomach show you that he's very skinny. When he fattens up they'll go away.

One last thing, although Tangs are herbivores they do like to eat mysis and other foods too. give him some variety and hopefully he'll beat the ich.
 
He should pick at the glass and rocks no matter how much you feed him -- that's a sign of a healthy fish.

I second the idea to switch from brine to something healthier. Seaweed sheets are a must in any tang's diet. You can also feed him frozen mysis. Another great frozen food for tangs is Emerald Entree, which you can find at Petco and Petsmart.
 
Ya, those products really dont do anything. The only two proven methods of dealing with ich are hypo and copper. You are basically just dumping stuff in your tank. But i am soooo glad to hear you didnt use copper. In tiny tiny tiny amounts its fatal to inverts, and once it gets in your rocks and substrate it never goes away. You basically have to start all over again.

I think if you just fatten him up and give him a few days, he will beat this on his own.
 
im headed to petsmart first thing in the morning. I gave him a whole shrimp cube and he ate just about all of it. if here were 100 pieces of brine in the cube, he got full at about 75% but continued to pick at the rest of the floating peices. I am concerned about herbtana though, it requires me to turn off my skimmer for the full 10 days of dosage. Would this create a problem if i'm concerned about him eating? id hate to overfeed and then have unwanted proteins and wastes in the tank. He is very active though, swims slowly from back and forth to both sides of tanks picking at whatever catches his eye. If i go up to the glass, he darts behind a rock and slowly comes back out to check things out. the only behavior im concerned about is the act of him going to the front left corner of the tank and shakes against the substrate and glass. could this be him rubbing from the irritating ich?
 
Ya, he is flashing, or scratching the ich. As the ich goes away, that will too.

Also, you should stop dosing that stuff, its doing nothing great for your tank and turn your skimmer back on. You want to keep really good water quality when you are treating sick fish, poor water quality will stress them out more and make it much harder for them to get well.
 
Bifferwine said:
He should pick at the glass and rocks no matter how much you feed him -- that's a sign of a healthy fish.

I second the idea to switch from brine to something healthier. Seaweed sheets are a must in any tang's diet. You can also feed him frozen mysis. Another great frozen food for tangs is Emerald Entree, which you can find at Petco and Petsmart.
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my salfin tang pick my algaes sometime hair algae but my hippo tang just getting bigger and bigger :shock:
 
+1 LittleFish

Also, it looks like he's the only fish you've got right now....That's a good thing...Just get him some algae sheets tomorrow, feed him, if he eats, he'll continue to get stronger and more than likely can fight the ich on his own..


Ich takes quite awhile once it "appears" to be gone. Don't add any fish until you're certain that the Tang has recovered from the ich. If 1 fish in a tank has ich, the other fish get it....in your case, it's much easier to take your time, get the Yellow Tang good and healthy and ich free before you add any additional fish.

If it calms your nerves, Yellow Tangs (compared to others in the Tang family) are built like tanks...They're a durable little fish, if he's eating there's a great chance that he's gonna pull through and be ok..

Good luck
 
Skimmer is back on. When you say "beat this on his own", you mean build immunity to it? This should then cause the ich to die off without a host and my water will become ich free as long as i give it time and i dont add any other fish till all is clear. Correct?
 
buddy08 said:
Skimmer is back on. When you say "beat this on his own", you mean build immunity to it? This should then cause the ich to die off without a host and my water will become ich free as long as i give it time and i dont add any other fish till all is clear. Correct?
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Nope. You will always have ich in your tank. But if your fish are healthy, it won't affect them. Your water will never be ich free unless you remove all fish from the tank, quarantine them and treat them with either hypo or copper for 8 weeks.

Most of us have ich in our tanks, and the fish are fine as long as the water quality is good and they are eating healthy, not fighting with each other, and not crowded.
 
Well crud, was hoping ich, like every other parasite (leeches, lice, mange, etc, etc) had to have a host to live on, no host = no food = death. I will monitor his behavior and his ich over the next few days and hopefully he'll do fine. Cichlids dont have ich so that was never an issue before. Just the devastating malawi bloat... which is like dropping a copper pipe in your frag tank. Not a good thing.

What is Mysis?
 
No, they will always have some of the parasite living on them, but they are able to fight the parasite off enough to keep you from seeing the parasite.
 
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